BRUTAL. And before the trolls jump in and say 'get gut'. Here is the key stat you NEED to see:

Number of teams where my team had more skill: 10 (+)

Number of teams where my team had less skill: 26(-)

So the ratio of good to bad teams was my good teams were 27% of my teams were 'good', while 63% were bad!!!.

I won 12, lost 24 - so overall I was 33% on the night. Sigh... Brutal, and depressing, and no fun.

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Note I was able to maintain/earn a chevron in 19, or half my battles. Of my 12 wins, I earned a chevron in 11 of them. I was definitely helping. In 8 of my 24 losses, I held onto my chevrons - and even earned 1.

I can not state the brutality of just how bad my bad teams were. Even some of my good teams were quite terrible. It was epic failure after epic failure. I even had a 15-0 loss thrown in for good measure.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for. What was the difference between Day 1-7 and Day 8? This is the proof that 'loser buckets' exist. Loser buckets being special servers mm puts players who've been doing to well into, so as to bring their win rates down. The difference was, on the day before Day 8, I had played 35 battles in my e25 and had won 25 of the, or 70%. MM had seen this 70% win rate and put me in a loser bucket. There is no question. There can be no doubt. Conformation that mm does pay attention to how you are doing, and ACTS ON THAT INFORMATION.

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It's important to point out that you can 'beat' the loser bucket in regular random battles. You can drive op tanks, you can toon, etc. etc. But you can't really do that in ranked, as everyone is driving a tier 10, and you can't toon (at least it wouldn't let me invite others when I was playing).

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This massive losing streak took several hours. I saw the same teammates over and over again. Some of them stated they were also having huge losing streaks.

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The very very very worst part of this is, I was actually kind of enjoying the game mode. Since it doesn't count against your stats (thank god), it has a much more 'casual' feel. At least on nights when mm is fair, and not out to get you.

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But the brutality of unbalanced team after unbalance team is just soul killing. Even when it's casual, and just for fun, stacked team after stacked team is depressing. I doubt I'll ever play this mode again, at least not until they fix the mm and balance teams based on skill.

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Oh, and I'm sure some of the trolls with say ranked 'is' sbmm. It's not. Not in any way shape or form. Far more often than not, one team would have 2-3 blues and many greens, while the other team might have a couple greens. Usually all the reds were on one team. Etc etc. It by no means actually balanced teams based on actual player skill. I was quite shocked to see so many oranges in the upper ranks, which only goes to prove you can rank up just by playing a lot.

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Another downside. I don't play tier 10 because they don't balance skill at that tier. It's bad enough having to carry at tier 5-8, which can be done 'sometimes'. But it's just not practical for any reasonably decent player to carry solo at tier 10. Of course another big reason it's so hard is the maps are too small for the tier 10 tanks. So many times I saw heavies get demolished before leaving the cap circle. I feel the tier 10 meta is to camp, let the lemmings rush out do their thing, then hopefully clean up after or farm some damage before it's over. Sad.

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Bonds are definitely not worth the bs of the crappy gameplay of ranked.

EDIT 02: Now I missed pages 3-10 of the responses to this post, but I think I'm going to really really enjoy serving this cheese to the troll whiners....

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It happened again. Exact same pattern as before. As stated in Edit 01, I played a bunch of random after my huge loosing streak, and crushed it. MM didn't like it, so when I logged back on the next day to play ranked - surprise:

Number of teams where my team had more skill: 4 (+)

Number of teams where my team had less skill: 16(-)

I mean COME ON MAN, that's even worse than last night. A whopping 80% were bad!!!. You just can't beat MM when it hands you that much 'bad'. Or can you... trolls eat your cheese....

Day 9

(-) LOSS-chevron maintained

(-) WIN-chevron earned

(-) LOSS-

(-) WIN-

(-) LOSS-

(-) LOSS-

(-) LOSS-chevron EARNED Come on man, first 7 teams out of the gate are the 'worse' teams... mm trolling me hard....

(+) WIN-

(+) WIN-

(-) LOSS-

(-) LOSS-

(-) LOSS-chevron maintained

(-) LOSS-chevron maintained

(-) WIN-

(-) LOSS-chevron maintained

(-) WIN-2 chevron earned

(-) LOSS-chevron maintained Come on man, I had the indignity to win 2 in a row, and mm trolls me hard with another 8 'worse' teams in a row.

(+) WIN-2 chevron earned

(+) WIN-2 chevron earned

(-) LOSS-

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The really spicy cheese is that most of my wins were near then end when I was back up to rank 8. I saw several trolls misstate that I was losing yesterday because I was losing at higher ranks. The opposite happened yesterday, I was losing all the way down. Today I actually won the higher I got up. Which makes sense to me. I can't carry a bad team, but I can help a decent team. So the higher I play, the better my team, the more I win. Although, really, my teams weren't good at all today, 80% of them were bad teams. Granted, it's still a losing day. I won 8, lost 12 BUT, considering that 80% of my teams were bad, I think 40% is darn good. It's twice the 20% of good teams I had. And compare both nights. Last night 63% teams were bad, 33% win rate. Tonight, 80% teams were bad, 40% win rate. So higher win rate on a much worse night.

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Oh, I'm back up to rank 8.

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I have said it before, and I'll say it again (and again and again) - Random MM is broken. It routinely gives one team a skill advantage, and routinely a large advantage at that. It breaks tier 10 gameplay for me. When the battle starts and one team has 3-5 more reds, it's just over. And that's a waste of time, energy, silver, ammo, etc...

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EDIT 03: Final results.

Well ranked is all over, here is where I landed. Finished at rank 8, Bronze league, place 3,502 - which is just squeaking in as Wood league starts at place 3,626. But it's an extra 1,000 bonds, (hurrah!)

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The last place in Wood league is 7,249. I can't find where it spells out what Wood league is. I know Leagues 1-3 represent top x%. I am assuming Wood League is 'everybody else'? If so, that's a pretty small number. I would hope WG heads this post and does something about balancing skill in ranked (and in randoms). sbmm will grow this game, let's make it happen wg.

I have streaks happen in both directions all the time. You don't make note of those great winning streaks, but you do the losing streaks. That's confirmation bias. When it happens at moments before an event/reward, it just makes it even more noticeable. I remember when I use to play MMO grind games and it seemed like I would always die right before I leveled.

I have streaks happen in both directions all the time. You don't make note of those great winning streaks, but you do the losing streaks. That's confirmation bias. When it happens at moments before an event/reward, it just makes it even more noticeable. I remember when I use to play MMO grind games and it seemed like I would always die right before I leveled.

I've never had a winning streak like this losing streak. I track my battles, write it down etc. It's not a 'feeling'...

TMI, Yeah it's rigged.... now what? I see the riggary clearly, yet i still hit Battle. Only fanboys believe the game is designed for fairness rather than keeping players hitting battle. I've spent too much time trying to tell blind tankers where to shoot in this forum. There are more common sense tomatoes in this forum than there are tomatoes in the game. Once again, now what, after you have told them there is a wall in front of them? They will just keep walking forward banging their head against the wall, just look at the replies....bang....bang.....bang...bang.

TMI, Yeah it's rigged.... now what? I see the riggary clearly, yet i still hit Battle. Only fanboys believe the game is designed for fairness rather than keeping players hitting battle. Once again, now what?

People don't care about $ like that...... WOT is entertainment. You don't pay for fairness, you pay to play. Costs 20 to go to the movies now a days, 20 lasts longer in WOT than a hour and a half movie. Smart people get it man, just count yourself as one of the non-braindead here and click battle just to blow stuff up.